The Beholder: A Maddie Richards Mystery by David Bishop

It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a truly good, surprising police detective, murder story, and with a female heroine too!

This novel has twists, hints, and solutions that surprise at every turn, and I mean in a very good way. The characters are alive and breathing, easy to relate to, and the baddy …. Well, he’s the biggest surprise, I won’t say anymore about him, but you won’t see that one coming until it is too late, and I guess that will be the case in real life too.

It freaked me out how detailed this author describes a scene and makes you think it’s a recap of a true story. The research done by Mr. Bishop must have taken a huge amount of time and effort and I don’t mean watching a lot of episodes of police flicks on telly. He’s giving his readers an insight in police matters that feels real and can only come from talking to insiders. Even the details that give us a peek at the mind of the baddy feel ‘right’ if you can say that when talking about heinous crimes and the workings of the criminal mind.

The way he misleads the reader into believing the wrong person is the real killer is superb. I mean, every time you think they’re closing in on the killer and it doesn’t really fit, you never once get the idea it’s contrived. Not before the heroine realises who the killer is, the reader finds out and that is a very nerve-racking few pages to read. Great!

And then how it all ends, of course the killer come to justice. (How I will not divulge, you’ll have to read the book to find out, but I can tell you it’s a great way to end this book.)

Then there’s the love angle. Throughout the story the man character, Maddie, struggles with issues in her life besides the case. Not much different from what would be the case in real life, because police-officers have a life besides their job and the case at hand. She struggles with that and even though it doesn’t come to a final resolution, I felt things would work out fine for Maddie at the end of the book. A few loose ends, but nothing that detract from this being a great read, because the case is solved and the loose ends are left in a way that you know they will be solved even if we’re not there to read about them.